Maybe in Europe. But in the US, your VW was built in Mexico, using US sheet metal. Sure, the drivetrain is from Deutschland, but the rest of the car is not.
You are correct. Voice "circuits" still use 64Kbps per call, 4Khz audio rolloff, and very mild compression. About the only thing that may cause problems is latency caused by an over-utilized trunk, but that's almost unheard of. Even the VoIP systems that share normal Internet traffic in the channel can be used with credit card and fax machines.
VoIP can deliver extremely high quality service. AT&T has been using it since the mid-1990s in their long distance network and no one seems to have noticed.
It's even better: Since it only takes up 1/2 a rack, you just put in 2 of them. When one fails, just swap over to the backup. Send a tech out in a few days to swap out the bad part (or better yet, send a Cisco tech out to swap out the bad part), while the NOC watches.
Why is there no option for a licensed data band for public use? This makes no sense to me. We can't get a public fiber network because that's a little to communistic (and I'm basically OK with that as long as the only barrier to entry is capital), so why can't we get some decent wireless bandwidth?
The 2.4Ghz band is a perfect example of "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade." It works even though it shouldn't. But other than a few experiments by ham radio operators there's no way it will work over long distances (greater than a mile), at least not day-in day-out, 99.99% uptime.
But imagine if we could go out and buy a license for, let's say the Upper D block of the 700MHz band (which didn't sell in the auctions), and let regular people buy equipment that would operate in that band, at high (greater than 1Watt) power, from a fixed location, for data service. Also allow ISPs to buy licenses so end users have something to connect to, and allow for groups to form mesh networks if they so choose. The license would be similar to a driver's license, in that you might not need to know how to design a Pi network, but you should know how to use an antenna tuner, for example. The band will need to be policed, of course, but that's not impossible either.
Poorly written article. "Super Wi-Fi" sits in unused tv spectrum. Moving to digital modulation (and having a database of television transmitter propagation) made it a little easier to get this going. It has been used by wireless microphones and other devices for years. There's a surprising amount of unused bandwidth sitting out there just because the original TV tuners back in the 1950s had such poor selectivity they needed a lot of guard band to keep interference down. Now that the FCC knows there aren't any old televisions from the 1950s in use, they could tighten up the allocations. But they're going to try this instead.
The frequency spectrum opened up during the digital transition (which could have happened using analog modulation) was for the 700MHz wireless auction.
Imagine if this was a U2 or similar piloted vehicle instead of a drone. We'd be preparing the bombers right now, along with special congressional resolutions condemning the Iraqis to death for "capturing" one of "our boys." Meanwhile the Iraqi government would be parading him all over Tehran, mostly for the western media to slobber over.
Instead we get a few jokes on Leno and the Daily Show, and a lot of diplomatic posturing.
No doubt we're going to war with Iran no matter what the American people want, but at least not over a spyplane (for a change).
If we had a choice in trade unions, maybe we'd want to be part of one. As it stands, if you want to form a union you have to be represented by an affiliate of the AFL/CIO, an entity not exactly known for their honesty and above-the-board behavior.
But you're forgetting that many/most of the occupiers have never had a job to begin with. The movement started when a bunch of college grads couldn't find work but had to start paying back student loans. They have no idea what it means to have a Blackberry strapped to your belt all the time. In fact, I'd bet 90% of them wouldn't realize that they shouldn't treat the company email system like Facebook and other social media systems, and check out when they are done for the day.
This actually has become a real problem. I'm on call all the time unless on vacation or other exceptions. I get compensated for being on call, $35/day + 2 hour minimum call out for the first call out of the night. However, there's a lot of email alerts that go out over the blackberry that I check. According to the company, I'm supposed to record the time spent checking email after normal working hours. This includes if I get a phone call during lunch.
This sounds great, but trying to keep track of that time is so much of a hassle and the reward isn't really worth it. I figure that if I have to take care of a true outage/etc, it counts as a call out. If I'm just checking the alarms, that's just a normal part of being on-call. If I get interrupted at lunch or my boss calls me on his way home, well, that just means I can leave a little early on Fridays and no one is going to say anything.
Next year, due to equipment upgrades and installation of redundant systems, I'll be able to go into an on-call rotation with my coworkers who are also now always on call. As far as I'm concerned, when I'm not on call, the BB gets set to "silent" and sits on the charger until tomorrow. My coworkers have my home number if they have a SHTF problem, but otherwise the NOC won't call and tickets won't go to me outside of normal business hours. Of course, if my coworkers do call, that becomes straight overtime or possibly call-out, depending on severity and my involvement in the issue. But if I'm out of cell range and miss the call I won't lose any sleep over it either.
But I'm paid hourly, not salary. If more employees were paid hourly I'm sure we'd be much better off. It makes it obvious who's doing the work and who's just getting by, because hours worked becomes a measurable metric. In a salary situation you're depending on the few employees who give a shit to stay late and make sure the work gets done, while there's others who either waste a ton of time or leave at 5:00 no matter what.
That once was true, but in the blackberry infested world I live in, the difference between email and IM is negligible.
Oh, except that the whole department chain of command is copied on every email (and adds their 2 cents), while most haven't figured out how to have more than a 2 way conversation on IM.
And this exact mentality is the reason there are between 2,000 and 5,500 tons of large debris [wikipedia.org] (over 500,000 distinct objects) in space
Which has nothing to do with repairing a satellite. If a satellite can't be controlled there's no way you'd send a manned mission to attempt to lasso it and fix it. If it can be controlled but otherwise has a problem, you simply de-orbit it. In fact, international law requires that operators de-orbit satellites at the end of their life.
Except that it's cheaper to launch a new satellite, with advanced technology, then it would be to retrieve and relaunch. The Hubble may be an exception, but recall that it wasn't returned to Earth, but repaired (at great expense and risk) in space.
The expensive parts of a satellite are launching them and where you park them, not the electronics.
I can never figure out why some of my co-workers want to use their personal devices for work anyway. My personal phone is just that, personal. I can wish my employer would get rid of the Blackberrys and Windows XP, but until that happens, I'm not going to loose any sleep over it. When I travel on business, I carry 2 laptops, mine and theirs (and increasingly a tablet and the company laptop). That way I don't have to worry about any auditing that might reveal something I don't want my employer to know, even if it's just my bank balance stored in the browser cache.
I don't want to put my personal equipment on the corporate network either. While it would be handy to get on the WiFi AP at the office, it just doesn't matter enough for me to have anything I look at on my phone subject to review by the IT department. Besides, I'm at work.
Slashdot Mirror
And let's not forget meals that come with free gifts, AKA the Happy Meal.
Work pr0n into that statement and you pretty much describe the whole Internet.
Actually, more like a Vogon freeway.
Maybe in Europe. But in the US, your VW was built in Mexico, using US sheet metal. Sure, the drivetrain is from Deutschland, but the rest of the car is not.
...But I still have a lot of confidence in the mission.
http://www.alpha.ca/web2//generators/alphagen
Anything is possible, it all comes down to cost.
No, but since there's not as much equipment to power, they won't need as large a battery plant to get the same runtime.
The big change is that CPE needs to have backup power as well.
You are correct. Voice "circuits" still use 64Kbps per call, 4Khz audio rolloff, and very mild compression. About the only thing that may cause problems is latency caused by an over-utilized trunk, but that's almost unheard of. Even the VoIP systems that share normal Internet traffic in the channel can be used with credit card and fax machines.
VoIP can deliver extremely high quality service. AT&T has been using it since the mid-1990s in their long distance network and no one seems to have noticed.
It's even better: Since it only takes up 1/2 a rack, you just put in 2 of them. When one fails, just swap over to the backup. Send a tech out in a few days to swap out the bad part (or better yet, send a Cisco tech out to swap out the bad part), while the NOC watches.
Why is there no option for a licensed data band for public use? This makes no sense to me. We can't get a public fiber network because that's a little to communistic (and I'm basically OK with that as long as the only barrier to entry is capital), so why can't we get some decent wireless bandwidth?
The 2.4Ghz band is a perfect example of "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade." It works even though it shouldn't. But other than a few experiments by ham radio operators there's no way it will work over long distances (greater than a mile), at least not day-in day-out, 99.99% uptime.
But imagine if we could go out and buy a license for, let's say the Upper D block of the 700MHz band (which didn't sell in the auctions), and let regular people buy equipment that would operate in that band, at high (greater than 1Watt) power, from a fixed location, for data service. Also allow ISPs to buy licenses so end users have something to connect to, and allow for groups to form mesh networks if they so choose. The license would be similar to a driver's license, in that you might not need to know how to design a Pi network, but you should know how to use an antenna tuner, for example. The band will need to be policed, of course, but that's not impossible either.
Poorly written article. "Super Wi-Fi" sits in unused tv spectrum. Moving to digital modulation (and having a database of television transmitter propagation) made it a little easier to get this going. It has been used by wireless microphones and other devices for years. There's a surprising amount of unused bandwidth sitting out there just because the original TV tuners back in the 1950s had such poor selectivity they needed a lot of guard band to keep interference down. Now that the FCC knows there aren't any old televisions from the 1950s in use, they could tighten up the allocations. But they're going to try this instead.
The frequency spectrum opened up during the digital transition (which could have happened using analog modulation) was for the 700MHz wireless auction.
It's not a wireless ISP. It's just a new RF band for data use. I doubt there's even an equipment manufacturer yet.
Whoops! Iran, Iraq... My brain knows the difference, but my fingers don't.
Imagine if this was a U2 or similar piloted vehicle instead of a drone. We'd be preparing the bombers right now, along with special congressional resolutions condemning the Iraqis to death for "capturing" one of "our boys." Meanwhile the Iraqi government would be parading him all over Tehran, mostly for the western media to slobber over.
Instead we get a few jokes on Leno and the Daily Show, and a lot of diplomatic posturing.
No doubt we're going to war with Iran no matter what the American people want, but at least not over a spyplane (for a change).
I voted for George Clinton!
I think a lot of the credit should go to the neural net processors flying the planes.
If his roof is damaged, he should be able to afford repairs:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5kg+platinum+price
"Let them eat cake, 2.0."
If we had a choice in trade unions, maybe we'd want to be part of one. As it stands, if you want to form a union you have to be represented by an affiliate of the AFL/CIO, an entity not exactly known for their honesty and above-the-board behavior.
But you're forgetting that many/most of the occupiers have never had a job to begin with. The movement started when a bunch of college grads couldn't find work but had to start paying back student loans. They have no idea what it means to have a Blackberry strapped to your belt all the time. In fact, I'd bet 90% of them wouldn't realize that they shouldn't treat the company email system like Facebook and other social media systems, and check out when they are done for the day.
This actually has become a real problem. I'm on call all the time unless on vacation or other exceptions. I get compensated for being on call, $35/day + 2 hour minimum call out for the first call out of the night. However, there's a lot of email alerts that go out over the blackberry that I check. According to the company, I'm supposed to record the time spent checking email after normal working hours. This includes if I get a phone call during lunch.
This sounds great, but trying to keep track of that time is so much of a hassle and the reward isn't really worth it. I figure that if I have to take care of a true outage/etc, it counts as a call out. If I'm just checking the alarms, that's just a normal part of being on-call. If I get interrupted at lunch or my boss calls me on his way home, well, that just means I can leave a little early on Fridays and no one is going to say anything.
Next year, due to equipment upgrades and installation of redundant systems, I'll be able to go into an on-call rotation with my coworkers who are also now always on call. As far as I'm concerned, when I'm not on call, the BB gets set to "silent" and sits on the charger until tomorrow. My coworkers have my home number if they have a SHTF problem, but otherwise the NOC won't call and tickets won't go to me outside of normal business hours. Of course, if my coworkers do call, that becomes straight overtime or possibly call-out, depending on severity and my involvement in the issue. But if I'm out of cell range and miss the call I won't lose any sleep over it either.
But I'm paid hourly, not salary. If more employees were paid hourly I'm sure we'd be much better off. It makes it obvious who's doing the work and who's just getting by, because hours worked becomes a measurable metric. In a salary situation you're depending on the few employees who give a shit to stay late and make sure the work gets done, while there's others who either waste a ton of time or leave at 5:00 no matter what.
The beauty of email is that it is asynchronous.
That once was true, but in the blackberry infested world I live in, the difference between email and IM is negligible.
Oh, except that the whole department chain of command is copied on every email (and adds their 2 cents), while most haven't figured out how to have more than a 2 way conversation on IM.
And this exact mentality is the reason there are between 2,000 and 5,500 tons of large debris [wikipedia.org] (over 500,000 distinct objects) in space
Which has nothing to do with repairing a satellite. If a satellite can't be controlled there's no way you'd send a manned mission to attempt to lasso it and fix it. If it can be controlled but otherwise has a problem, you simply de-orbit it. In fact, international law requires that operators de-orbit satellites at the end of their life.
Except that it's cheaper to launch a new satellite, with advanced technology, then it would be to retrieve and relaunch. The Hubble may be an exception, but recall that it wasn't returned to Earth, but repaired (at great expense and risk) in space.
The expensive parts of a satellite are launching them and where you park them, not the electronics.
I can never figure out why some of my co-workers want to use their personal devices for work anyway. My personal phone is just that, personal. I can wish my employer would get rid of the Blackberrys and Windows XP, but until that happens, I'm not going to loose any sleep over it. When I travel on business, I carry 2 laptops, mine and theirs (and increasingly a tablet and the company laptop). That way I don't have to worry about any auditing that might reveal something I don't want my employer to know, even if it's just my bank balance stored in the browser cache.
I don't want to put my personal equipment on the corporate network either. While it would be handy to get on the WiFi AP at the office, it just doesn't matter enough for me to have anything I look at on my phone subject to review by the IT department. Besides, I'm at work.